Yelp, TripAdvisor: Inside the ratings game

The Yelp.com ratings page for the Stone Soup Company in Tampa, Fla. Restaurant owner Ilya Goldberg is striving to raise his rating on the widely viewed website to four stars after falling back, briefly, to three. SOURCE: YELP.COM

Cassie Piasecki navigates by the stars. Where to dine next? Where to work out when she's traveling? She scans the web, favoring those places with four- and five-star reviews, disregarding the rest.

Online reviews led her to Pie-Not, a four-star eatery in Costa Mesa, where she enjoyed her first Australian meat pie. She discovered Bamboo Bistro, a tiny Asian Fusion restaurant in Corona del Mar all but hidden from traffic on Pacific Coast Highway.

“You wouldn’t really know it was there,” says Piasecki, 45, a social-media expert and Pilates instructor who resides in Newport Beach. Her world has broadened: She has visited — and reviewed — more than 1,200 dining spots and other businesses. She talks of hidden gems in Palm Springs, a fancy steakhouse in Boston, a gourmet cheese shop in New York City. A year ago, in Paris, she located a Halloween haunted house suitably scary for her husband, Jack.

Legions of Piaseckis are out there – modern-day Magi who arrange their lives by turning to the starred ratings of products, places and services visible across cyberspace. A single galaxy, TripAdvisor.com, reported posting its 100-millionth online review in February, and has since topped 125 million. CEO Stephen Kaufer says a new review of a hotel, restaurant or tourist attraction goes onto the website literally every second. Annual revenues top $760 million.

Yelp.com occupies another horizon. The San Francisco site, founded in 2004, also posts reviews that pour in, voluntarily, from consumers eager to express their views. So far more than 42 million have been submitted, conferring starred ratings on businesses throughout Orange County and other major markets around the world. About 108 million people see the website every month, Yelp says. The firm’s ever-soaring revenues are expected to reach $228 million this year, up two-thirds from 2012.

Scores of review sites rate everyone from the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker to lawyers, dentists and high school math teachers. Google competes directly with Yelp; the search giant feeds starred review content to its Android mobile devices, while Yelp has a deal with rival Apple. Amazon showcases ratings of books, music and videos – and of sellers who deal in those products. Rotten Tomatoes does movies. Angie's List reviews contractors. Edmunds.com rates car brands and auto dealerships.

The modern consumer can seek guidance from the womb to the grave: Vitals.com offers the skinny on obstetricians. Funeralhomeratingz.com has the last word on final resting places.

“It’s difficult to say how big an industry this is,” says financial analyst Sameet Sinha of the online ratings universe. Sinha, of B. Riley & Co. in San Francisco, notes that just a few top players – Yelp, Angie's List and TripAdvisor – represent a combined market cap totaling billions of dollars. The sector has exploded virtually out of nowhere, he says. “It’s certainly become a key part of the Internet ecosystem.”

Threat to businesses

The power of online reviews has wrought profound, and in some cases troubling, changes to American commerce. Pick any given florist, plumber, hotel, music school, taco stand or muffler-repair shop in Orange County and chances are there are online reviews, probably on more than one website. The ratings are a sore spot for many entrepreneurs who complain they are being done in by negative reviews written by rivals and disgruntled ex-employees, with virtually no chance to remove them from the public eye.

One business owner likened being criticized on a ratings site to seeing his company attacked on a highway billboard, powerless to tear it down.

“They've become my silent partner without me signing up for it. Whether I want (the review sites) or not, they're here,” says Dr. Naz Haque, whose Market Place Dentistry in Tustin advertises “one-day, same-day crowns.” The 9-year-old dental group has a 4-star rating on YellowPages.com, a 3½-star rating on CitySearch.com, and, for whatever reasons, a much-lower one-star ranking on Yelp, where some of the comments are blistering.

“Don't ever go here!” writes “Brooklyn C.” of Alhambra, a frequent reviewer whose full name is not available. The comments accompany two profile pictures – of a sports car and a koala.

Yelp's enormous reach amplifies such a voice, putting it before virtually anyone who might be dentist-shopping in Orange County while concealing the reviewer’s identity.

Critics can “post without any repercussions . . . and it affects livelihoods,” says Haque, who says the reviews do not reflect what patients say in the practice's own surveys. “We started asking our patients if they're happy with us,” she says. “Basically, patients would say, 'You have a lot of reviews about you that are not true.'“

Related Links

The Yelp.com ratings page for the Stone Soup Company in Tampa, Fla. Restaurant owner Ilya Goldberg is striving to raise his rating on the widely viewed website to four stars after falling back, briefly, to three. SOURCE: YELP.COM
Cassie Piasecki leans out the doorway of a yoga and Pilates studio in her hometown of Newport Beach. She uses online review sites regularly to find businesses in Orange County and wherever she travels, often writing about her experiences on Yelp.com. DARNELL RENEE, FOR THE REGISTER
Donna Rodeheaver, general manager at 149 Sports Grill & Bar in Orange, shows off the Yelp website on her phone. The restaurant has offered discounts to customers who can show that they have written a review, she says. JEBB HARRIS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Owner Sammy Medali and general manager Donna Rodeheaver at 149 Sports Grill & Bar in Orange. Online review sites such as Yelp and UrbanSpoon help small businesses stay sharp by providing important feedback, Rodeheaver says. JEBB HARRIS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Consumer Reports sensory expert Maxine Siegel, left, tests the quality of a bagel with Dana Arena, center, and Karen Ram at the 75th anniversary celebration of Consumer Reports in New York's Grand Central Terminal in 2011. Consumer Reports, the world's largest independent product tester, uses professionals to set its ratings. DIANE BONDAREFF, COURTESY OF AP IMAGES FOR CONSUMER REPORTS

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